The Cyrenaic School was founded by Aristippus, who lived in Cyrene, a luxurious city of northern Africa. Aristippus was a man of the world. He was first a Sophist and later a disciple of Socrates. After Socrates’ death he returned to Cyrene. Here he founded his school, which included three generations of his own family. The prominent members of it were Arete, his daughter; Aristippus, his grandson; Theodorus, Hegesias, Anniceris, and Euhemerus, the author of so-called Euhemerism, which taught that the gods were originally only great men. In opposition to the brutal bareness of the Cynic school, the Cyrenaics saw the true end of life in the pleasures of sense. Following Protagoras, Aristippus said that the sensations are always true and can be defined in terms of motion. The school developed an elaborate psychology of sensation which summarizes its doctrine. It is as follows: (1) The intensity and not the duration of a sensation determines its value; (2) Bodily pleasures are of greater value than mental because they are more intense; (3) I can know only my own sensations, and therefore they are of greater value than another’s; (4) Man has a reasonable insight which determines him in the choice of his sensations.
The practical problem of life for this, as it was forthe Cynic school, was how to become individually independent of the world. But the Cyrenaic taught independence by enjoyment, in opposition to the Cynic’s independence by renunciation. The Cyrenaic Wise Man knows all the pleasures of life thoroughly, from animal satisfactions to spiritual ecstasies. He uses them all, but never forgets himself. He is lord of his appetites, never wishes the impossible, and has perfect and serene peace.
It is an interesting fact that this pleasure-loving school drew pessimism as the consequence of its theory. If life fails to give enjoyment, it is a failure. That life alone is reprehensible that has more pain than pleasure. It is on this ground that man should submit to law and custom rather than give up his pleasures. Yet some members of the school maintained that man is bound to be unhappy. While he should have pleasure, he is so constituted that he cannot gain it. The body of man is an inevitable sufferer. The highest that we can hope is painlessness.
The Cynic and Cyrenaic schools occupy an important position in the history of philosophy. The Cynic doctrine was the basis of the teaching of the Stoic school, and the Cyrenaic was the legitimate predecessor of the Epicurean school. These great schools were founded in Athens seventy-five years later, and will be discussed under the Hellenic-Roman Period.
CHAPTER VI
THE SYSTEMATIC PERIOD (399 B. C.–322 B. C.)
The Waning of the Greek National Spirit. The Systematic Period extends from the death of Socrates to the death of Aristotle. It is only seventy-seven years long—about the same length as the Anthropological and half as long as the Cosmological Period. It begins with those sorry days after the Peloponnesian War and ends with the supremacy of Macedonian power. The period was filled with ferocious wars among the Grecian cities. First came the supremacy of Sparta, then of Thebes (371–362 B. C.), then the invasion by Philip of Macedon and the battle of Chæronea, 338 B. C. In 334 B. C. Alexander the Great began the conquest of the Orient, which he accomplished in two years. He thought by this that he could reunite the Greeks in a common cause. He failed for two reasons. In the first place, as a Macedonian the Greeks would not take him as a national representative. In the second place, the Greek spirit was waning. The people had lost their glorious ideals. Decay had set in. The worm was at the root of Greek life. Greek art, literature, and statesmanship had passed.
The Place of the Three Systematic Philosophers in Greek History. Nevertheless, when Greek national life was approaching dissolution, science ripened its richest fruits and created its most comprehensive systems of philosophy. These are connected with the names of Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle. Thesegreat systems evidently cannot be accounted for by the social conditions in which they appear. Neither the need nor the demand of the disrupted Greece of these years would be a sufficient cause to explain the appearance of a Plato or an Aristotle. The interests of the Greek people became narrower as the interests of the Greek philosophers became more broadly human. The intellectual tendency of this short period was utilitarian and practical. The problems that now interested the Athenians were the details of mechanics, physiology, rhetoric, and politics. The field of science was now for the first time systematized to logic, ethics, and physics—a classification which, we shall find, will exist for many centuries. Sparta and Macedonia, not Athens and Abdera, represent the spirit of the period.
If then Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle do not reflect the time in which they live, what relation do they bear to Greek civilization? They are not isolated and out of all relation to the life of the Greek people. On the contrary, they are the most comprehensive and the most profound expression of Greek life. One turns to them as the most perfect representation of Greek culture. They are the intimate expression of Greek thought, even if not of contemporaneous Greek thought. They are the final statements of the two preceding periods, projected into a time that had other interests. Democritus brought the Cosmological movement to a close, was its final expression, and gave it systematic form. Plato did the same for the Anthropological Period. In Aristotle the systematic cosmology of Democritus and the systematic ethics of Plato find a new meaning, in a closer union, under a more coördinating principle. Aristotle was the last possible word of Greekphilosophy, for he systematized every branch known to the Greeks. He not only evolved a speculative theory of the whole, but he organized the special sciences. It must be further said that no one of these three great Greeks could have produced the results each did produce, if each had not been the leader of a school of many workers. Within each school there must have been vigorous coöperation along lines according to the inclination of the individual members. Thus each school collected a vast amount of material which was worked over according to the method and purpose of the leader.
The Fundamental Principle of the Systematic Period. At the beginning of this book attention was called to the difference between Greek, Mediæval, and Modern thought. Greek thought was characterized as objective. It is important to reiterate this objective significance of Greek thought at this point, when we are about to discuss the teachings of Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle. Plato’s theory is often called an idealism and Democritus’ theory materialism, but they are not the idealism and materialism of modern times. No terms have fluctuated in their meanings more than such philosophical terms as these, as can be judged from the fact that in the Middle Ages Plato’s doctrine was called realism. The Greeks were not idealists in the sense that Berkeley and Hegel were idealists. In general, it should be remembered that when we speak of Greek art, Greek politics, Greek philosophy as idealistic,they are not idealistic in the modern sense.[19]